Networking devices in certain wired networks are configured to collect performance information from packets passing through the device. In this way, the networking devices can expose and/or calculate statistics for one or more of: capture jitter, roundtrip time (RTT), throughput, packet loss, etc. for use by a network administrator. For example, the administrator can use captured performance information to determine whether a wide area network (WAN) edge device or an enterprise is experiencing congestion. This helps network administrators to deploy media (data, voice and video) applications with pre-defined service level agreements, evaluate their performance characteristics and perform effective troubleshooting.
Wireless local area networks, such as Wi-Fi™ networks (e.g., Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 networks) have ever increasing footprints, providing tremendous bandwidth and flexibility for end users. The growth of wireless networks has enabled mobility for an exploding number of end devices and has enabled new business models (e.g., Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Work Your Way (WYW), etc.). However, wireless networks do not provide network administrators with the same performance monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities that are available in wired networks.